Tupac died in 1996, Biggie died in 1997. In 1998, DMX emerged as a modern folk hero, an iron-hearted bard of the streets who became the first rapper to put out two number one albums in the same calendar year. DMX released It's Dark And Hell Is Hot in the spring of '98 and Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood three days before Christmas. This same year, music video guru Hype Williams, impressed with X's superhuman charisma, offered him a film role: the lead in what would become the stylish gangster flick Belly.
“Hype Williams did my first video ‘Get At Me Dog,’ and at the end of the video, I’m eating and everything and he asked me if I wanted to be part of a movie," he told MTV's Sucker Free in 2012. His response: “Hell yeah.”
“I really don’t remember how I felt at the time,” he said of the film's production. “You gotta remember also, during that whole movie, I’d eat an egg and cheese sandwich with turkey bacon in the morning, then I’d drink a bottle of Hennessy per day. That was the contents of my stomach everyday.”
Thus began DMX's thespian career. Over the course of the following decade, he would star in a number of films, in most of which he was typecast as a drug dealer of some sort. And admittedly, many of these were crappy straight-to-DVD movies. Even amidst these low-budget shitshows, and amidst his recurring legal issues and his quest to father more children than any other man on Earth, DMX burnished his reputation as the most vital rapper-actor of his time. Ludacris, T.I., Ice Cube, Andre 3000—none of these guys have shit on Dark Man X.
Today is DMX's 47th birthday. We're celebrating his 10 most illustrious film roles between 1998 and 2008. Read on and let us know which is your favorite.
Belly (1998)
DMX and Nas co-star as two New York gangsters whose entry into heroin distribution goes horribly wrong.
Romeo Must Die (2000)
Jet Li underdelivers in a starring role, leaving the door open for DMX to shine as the fourth lead. He plays Silk, a club operator who gets mixed up with the wrong people. Wrote Nell Minow: "This hip-hop Romeo and Juliet is awful."
Exit Wounds (2001)
An aging Steven Seagal plays a maverick, mullet-ed Detroit cop who joins forces with a drug dealer masquerading as a billionaire computer wiz, who is portrayed by Dark Man X.
Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)
In Cradle 2 the Grave, DMX stars as a diamond thief motoring up and down the steep hills of San Francisco in a stolen ATV. Arguably DMX's greatest triumph as a thespian.
Def Jam Vendetta (2003)
Admittedly, Def Jam Vendetta is a video game, not a movie, but given that its entertainment value is significantly greater than the majority of the movies on this list, we're gonna go right ahead and include it.
Never Die Alone (2004)
DMX stabs people with ice picks and mixes heroin and battery acid. Roger Ebert gave Never Die Alone 3.5 out of 4 stars—a higher grade than he gave Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Death Toll (2007)
DMX stars as The Dog, a New Orleans drug kingpin who makes $10 million a month whose violent tactics draw the ire of the New Orleans police department. Film criticism site DVDVerdict described the film as "a collection of moving images that makes little sense and boasts the entertainment value of a wasp sting to the genitals."
Last Hour (2008)
Five men descend on an abandoned house in China, only to realize that a sixth man is lurking somewhere else in the house. Starring DMX, David Carradine (RIP), and a host of others.
Last Hour currently nurses a 11% Rotten Tomatoes user approval rating. Here's what RT SuperReviewer Ken Doerr had to say: "DMX, Paul Sorvino, David Carradine and Michael Madsen must not be able to tell the difference anymore between doing a good movie and doing complete crap. The acting was so horrible and with this cast it shouldn't have been. But it was."
Lords of the Street (2008)
Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Lords of the Street follows a Mexican drug lord who escapes from jail to recover the $15 million his girlfriend has stashed. A hitman (DMX) and cop (Kris Kristofferson) pursue him from opposite directions. Who will get there first?????
The Bleeding (2009)
The Bleeding follows a man who seeks revenge against a gang of vampires who slaughtered his family. DMX is the fourth lead. Brian Orndorf gave the film a "D." He wrote: "A slapdash mess of genres with zero storytelling capability, Bleeding looks to coast on red-hot vampire trends. Instead, the film bites, and not in a satisfyingly monstrous manner."